The president plans to emphasize increased law enforcement funding and aggressive gun safety law enforcement Thursday as the GOP looks to spotlight the issue in the midterms.
NEW YORK — President Joe Biden on Thursday plans to join New York’s new Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, in offering what White House officials describe as a road map for crime messaging this year with Republicans set to spotlight the issue in the midterm elections.
Biden plans to emphasize both increased funding for law enforcement and aggressive enforcement of gun safety laws on Thursday’s trip, which marks his highest-profile effort to date to model the Democrats’ election-year balancing act of supporting law enforcement while also insisting on new police accountability.
Biden plans to first visit the New York Police Department’s headquarters for a meeting focused on preventing gun violence and then head to a city public school to discuss community intervention programs.
While Biden is speaking in New York, Republican National Committee officials are scheduled to gather in Utah for their winter meeting. An RNC spokesperson said Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s address Friday will focus heavily on violent crime.
Many of the policies Biden intends to spotlight Thursday are ones he laid out last year at the White House, including investment in community violence interruption programs, regulation of so-called ghost guns — firearms without serial numbers often sold in kits without background checks — and federal “strike forces” to help cities and states combat the flow of illegal guns.
The White House was eager to build on those announcements early this election year, and in New York, to underscore what it sees as a common approach with Adams, a New York police veteran who won a crowded mayoral primary in the heavily Democratic city on a platform that included stepped-up policing efforts. Adams has referred to himself as the “Biden of Brooklyn,” saying the two had connected in past interactions. “That’s my dude,” Adams said last month.
